A parade of witnesses testified Friday that they were paid by an employee of former City Hall technology vendor Mark St. Pierre to handle pool care, house-cleaning, lawn care and other services for the city's onetime chief technology officer Greg Meffert, and in some cases, for his boss and neighbor on Park Island, Mayor Ray Nagin.

View full sizeTed Jackson, The Times-PicayuneMark St. Pierre enters federal court with his wife on May 11.

The work was coordinated by Jimmy Goodson, an old St. Pierre pal who was a welding instructor at Louisiana Technical College making $22 an hour in 2005, when St. Pierre hired him. Although Goodson had no technology skills, St. Pierre began billing city taxpayers more than $75 an hour for his services.

In all, St. Pierre's firm Imagine billed the city more than $175,000 for Goodson's work as a "technology liaison" in 2005 and 2006. But Jeff Talley, senior project manager for Ciber, testified that the only thing he ever saw Goodson do was drive Meffert around.

The arrangement began around the time of Hurricane Katrina. A few months before the storm, Goodson formed a company called Custom Transportation Management, which prosecutors say was simply a tool to funnel gifts and benefits to Meffert and Nagin.

A roofer, a pool servicer, two landscapers and a maid all testified Friday that Goodson hired them to work on Meffert's house after the storm. The two lawn-care company owners said Goodson also instructed them to cut the grass at Nagin's house, which was just down Park Island Drive from Meffert's.

Goodson, who was outside the courtroom Friday, is expected to testify next week.

Household help

Mickey Hughes of Springfield, Mo., a foreman for Robinson Construction, said "Big Jim" called him to reroof Meffert's large yellow house on Park Island, then paid him more than $9,000 for the job.

Dana Ree Delgado got more than $7,000 from Goodson for her husband's company, Miguel Delgado's Pool Service, to clean and do weekly maintenance on the Mefferts' pool, which sits next to a sloping wooded area on Bayou St. John.

Goodson hired Randy's Lawn Care to cut the grass at both the Mefferts' and the Nagins' properties until the spring of 2006, at $200 a month each, Randy Gray testified. Then Goodson replaced Randy's with Mighty Mowers in June 2006, with a group price to cut Meffert, Nagin and St. Pierre's grass for a combined $521 a month.

During Hurricane Katrina, Goodson met Mercedes Soriano cleaning at a hotel, she testified. He hired her to clean the Mefferts' house every week from February 2006 to mid-2007, and sometimes Goodson told her to clean the St. Pierres' house in Belle Chasse and a luxury yacht, the Silicon Bayou, that St. Pierre had bought for Meffert to enjoy.

Meffert testified earlier this week that St. Pierre paid for strippers to perform sex acts on Meffert and others at weekly parties on the boat. Soriano added to the picture of the yacht as a perk specifically for Meffert, saying there was a picture of Meffert's sons in the yacht's master bedroom.

All told, Goodson's Custom Transportation Management paid more than $37,000 for services at the Meffert and Nagin homes, most of it at the Meffert home, according to testimony from those who did the work. None of the contractors knew Goodson actually worked for St. Pierre and that he was paid with taxpayer money through St. Pierre's contract at City Hall.

Denials by Nagin

Although the testimony was new to the jury, The Times-Picayune in 2007 published a story about Goodson's lucrative gig as Meffert's driver, and in 2009, the newspaper published a story about the services Goodson was providing to Meffert and Nagin.

Nagin at the time denied receiving any free services.

While Nagin was quarantined in China, the paper asked him by email whether a third party paid for his home's lawn care. He responded: "Not sure where you are getting that from. I pay to have my home and lawn maintained."

By that time, the mayor's home had been dropped from the service, Mighty Mowers' Jennifer Phillips testified Friday. But back in 2009, The Times-Picayune asked Nagin a follow-up question: Had a third party ever overseen or managed his property?

"As I stated before I pay for maintenance on my home. Your source is not good," the mayor wrote back.

Nagin did not respond to an email from The Times-Picayune on Friday.

Bond formed in Katrina

Goodson's property-management services for the mayor were separate from his full-time work at the technology office.

It is not clear when Goodson began doing errands for Meffert, but the city did not begin paying for his services until Katrina. He rode out the storm at the Hyatt Hotel across from City Hall with Meffert and other members of the technology team; at some point during the chaos, those who were there have said, Goodson acquired a gun and a police badge of unknown provenance.

Goodson continued working for the city until shortly after Meffert's departure in mid-2006. According to testimony Friday, he continued managing Meffert's property until April 2007, at which point he informed Mighty Mowers that they should enter into a new contract directly with the Mefferts.

That was also around the time that St. Pierre stopped paying Meffert a $500-an-hour consulting fee, a payment Meffert testified he received for doing nothing. Meffert said his relationship with St. Pierre had gone sour.

After leaving City Hall, Goodson continued to work for St. Pierre's firm, NetMethods, the company that paid for Nagin's vacations to Hawaii and Jamaica.

High income brackets

Testimony Friday also revealed that St. Pierre billed city taxpayers nearly $500,000 between 2004 and 2006 for his technology work.

The amount paid to St. Pierre under the Imagine contract was by far the highest of any employee, even though Meffert said St. Pierre was not a technical wizard and his strength was as a "people person." In fact, several of the employees who were paid large sums of money through the city technology contract had no technology skills.

One was Celeste Thibodeaux, the wife of Meffert's counterpart in Lafayette city government.

Meffert testified this week that St. Pierre struck a deal with Lafayette tech chief Keith Thibodeaux, under which Lafayette would hire NetMethods if Meffert would bring on Celeste Thibodeaux at City Hall.

Celeste Thibodeaux had no technology experience, so Meffert said he came up with a position called "grant administrator" and paid her more than $90 an hour. He said that because she lived in Lafayette, she hardly ever came to New Orleans, except once every few weeks "just to show her face."

Ciber's director of accounting, Bob Kroha, testified that Celeste Thibodeaux made $236,000 in 14 months at Imagine. Talley, the senior project manager for Ciber, testified that he didn't see her until at least seven months into her tenure.